Union

By Roberto Assagioli from Il Cammino Spirituale, Assagioli Archive Florence, translated by Jan Kuniholm and Francesco Viglienghi

When the personal ego is freed from identifications with particular elements and activities (sensations, emotions, impulses, thoughts…) and from attachments to them, man recognizes his essential identity with the other selves, an underlying unity and spontaneous communion.

There are no watertight compartments in the universe. There are in ships, and they are most useful, but in the universe and in becoming there is nothing absolute. There are varying degrees of communication and communicability; infinite, wonderful intercommunications in this living universe of which we are a part.

Relationships with nature and the universe are complex and mysterious, and they raise the most difficult questions about the origin, meaning, and purpose of life. These form the perennial subject of philosophical meditations, spiritual longings, and religious faiths.

The mystery, that materialistic society and intellectualistic presumption believed it had banished, permeates everything around us; we find it as much in the blade of grass as in the wandering comet, and above all within ourselves.

There is a growing relationship of love and union between all levels, from the lowest to the highest. Fraternity — all things and all beings children of the same Father, emanations of the same Principle — is one of the essential notes of spiritual love. To things, elements and subhuman beings in general we owe a great debt of gratitude, that is generally not recognized and not felt. Therefore, we also owe to animals, our “lesser brothers”, the love that was so keenly felt, for example, by the Buddha and St. Francis.

Towards our closest brothers and sisters, those who are more or less on the same level as us, who struggle, who suffer and who proceed at our side, our love takes on a character of deep communion, of intimate brotherhood.

This fraternal friendship, based on the Ciceronian unum velle et unum nolle,[1] should be continuously expressed in a free and reciprocal exchange of aid, in a mutual support in the rough steps of the path that leads to the summits.

Towards higher beings, our cooperation consists in invoking. Invocation is a synthesis of meditation, prayer and affirmation. Its function is to create a channel of inflow and then call the Higher Beings, to make possible the projection of light, love and power down to the levels where human personalities live.

[1] “one like and one dislike.” This appears to be part of a common proverb, alioqui si non  unum velle et unum nolle habetis, melius est ut non simul habiteti.  It has the sense of “If you do not have common likes and dislikes, it is better not to live together.” See Cicero’s Laelius de Amicitia. —Tr.